South Africa v Australia: second men’s cricket Test, day one delayed by rain – live

• 1m ago

  Teams

• 6m ago

  Australia win the toss and bowl

• 16m ago

  Preamble

So, mature-age debutant Ackerman will be into the action immediately, opening the batting this morning. Steve Smith is playing after some concern following his head knock in Durban.

South Africa
Aiden Markram
Marques Ackerman
David Bedingham
Temba Bavuma *
Matthew Breetzke
Ryan Rickelton +
Wiaan Mulder
Marco Jansen
Simon Harmer
Anrich Nortje
Kagiso Rabada

Australia
Nic Maddinson
Travis Head
Marnus Labuschagne
Steve Smith
Matt Renshaw
Alex Carey
Beau Webster
Pat Cummins
Mitchell Starc
Scott Boland
Josh Hazlewood

Pat Cummins has no hesitation in bowling first, something he’s done more than most captains. He cites the fact that it’s a damp morning, that the wicket will be freshest today, and rather burying the lede, that they have once again dropped their spinner to play four fast bowlers, with Scott Boland coming in for Nathan Lyon.

Temba Bavuma says, “We were undecided, but a decision has been made on our behalf.” Understated as ever. For his team, Marques Ackerman will debut, Matthew Breetzke comes in to help the batting, and then there’s Rabada. So that means Verreyne and Stubbs miss out from the batting side of things, and interestingly Keshav Maharaj is the spinner dropped rather than Simon Harmer. Maharaj bowling left arm is very much the senior bowler, but Harmer the off-spinner may have been preferred with so many Australian left-handers.

Interesting given left-arm spin has been effective against Australian sides for a while now.

Hello, cricket pals. Get ready for something spicy. And wet. Spicy and wet. The tom kha soup of cricket. It’s coming to your table very shortly, direct from Gqeberha, which you may know historically as Port Elizabeth.

Here’s the deal. Australia in South Africa, tough away trip but they’ve got a record doing it, very competitive and tense history between the teams, not to mention some… uh… stuff that happened last time that was spoken about exhaustively in the first place. And amid all this context, Australia rolled up and grabbed the first Test in Durban despite a batting collapse on day one.

Point two, South Africa will revamp their side quite substantially, and oh oh oh oh, Rabada’s back. Last time we had this tour, Australia also won in Durban but then got torn up by Rabada in Gqeberha. This time he’s coming off a hamstring injury, so point one will be whether he can bowl at his best and get through without aggravating it.

South Africa have to grab this game to stay in the series, and there are precious World Test Championship points / chunks of win percentage on offer. Shall we?

Geoff will be here shortly to take you through the first half of the day, but for now remind yourselves of how Australia took a 1-0 series lead with victory on day five of the first Test in Durban.